Never Should Have
by Traitor of All Traitors
Summary: Even after the end of everything, one lingers to witness the pain and broadcast the suffering. Who did what and who was responsible. A survivor whose heart is full of hurt and over the edge for the ultimate closure that had been taken away. What sanity is left in an existence devoid of any comfort?


Creation began on 01-15-18

Creation ended on 01-15-18

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Never Should Have

A/N: Ties to _Primordial Shinji_ and several future stories interconnected with each other.

Damaged by his parents. That's the only way I could really describe him in the end. He was damaged by his mother and father…and there was no way to mend him. No, that's not entirely true. There was a way to mend him, to save him…but I chose not to in the end.

Who was Shinji Ikari? Was he the only son of Yui and Gendo Ikari? Was he a pilot for the cybernetic monstrosity called Evangelion? Was he the young man that got forced to decide everyone's fate? No.

He was none of those things. He was none of those designations. I understand that now, more than I failed to see it before. Shinji wasn't…someone who had it in him to do anything that could change the world. He was…just a boy that was dealt the worst hand anyone could be dealt with.

" _Please, help me!"_ I can still remember him yelling to me and anyone else that bothered to listen to him for more than a minute or so.

He had been abandoned by his parents and later used by them to unmake the world…and for what? For who? Was there even a reason behind doing so? This had absolutely nothing to do with saving anyone in this ruined world. It only had to do with undoing everything that lived and breathed because of a cruel fate chosen by those who thought they knew what was best for everyone left alive.

But he didn't know any of that. Shinji was virtually clueless and left stumbling in the dark, lied to and betrayed by those that should have mattered, not because they knew, but because he needed them in his life. The longer he went without any shred of kindness, any real family, the more broken he got until it became so obvious to those that could see he was crippled. Emotional, vulnerable and insecure barely come close to the breaking point he had suffered, time and again.

" _LIARS!"_ He yelled at us, and he had every right to do so.

We lied to him, kept him in the dark, withheld things from him that he had a right to know, to question, for better or worse. And he thought the Angels were the monsters out to lay waste to mankind. When it was really the people he wanted so much to protect, to hear say that he mattered to them, that were the real monsters. He probably still doesn't know how to get past that harsh truth.

Not that it really matters, anymore. To him, at least. There's no world left to thrive in. No people left to save, to protect or anything. It's just…Shinji, the only one left in an existence devoid of any hope, of any faith in people.

And myself, the one he doesn't see or hear in the abyss. The one that has to carry this regret for eternity as he wanders through what is best described as one life to the next that only makes him more deranged and irritable because none of these lives are truly his own. And as I see him asleep, a rare moment in the abyss of his own torment that he wants to escape from, I see his reason for such. Nothing could and would deviate him from the desire he had left in his heart.

Even if by some chance people did return to the world he lost, it was nothing more than another lie to him…and the only one that bothered to come back with him had led him on his path of vengeance and goal to end what was left of his past. As he gathered allies from these other lives, different shades of himself and others he once knew or thought he knew, appealing to their desires for vengeance, his drive was based on one absolute that was taken from him: His right to cease to exist. His mother had stolen from him that right, trying to convince him to go on living, but it had just the opposite effect on Shinji. He just got worse and worse, wanting so much to be allowed to stop, to do more than just sleep.

" _These lives hurt more than the life I lost,"_ he once uttered to himself as he found himself looking for Yui Ikari in yet another existence. _"I can't take this much longer. I don't want to go on. I don't care what happens to everyone else in this vast majority of existence, so long as I don't have to continue going on."_

Shinji Ikari wasn't just damaged and hurting from the long list of lies, deception and betrayal. He was past the edge. He became someone with a death wish that unhinged him because his mother refused to let him cease living. The longer he had to go through with an unwanted life, the more unstable he became…and the more deteriorated he became, too.

There was only so much that one could take, and he didn't want to take any more of what was being forced upon him. And all others be damned because of Yui for refusing to see that this was doing more harm than good for her son. Yet, she wasn't the only one. The list was long and painful to read out.

Yui Ikari.

Gendo Rokubungi-Ikari.

Rei Ayanami.

Ritsuko Akagi.

Toji Suzuhara.

Kensuke Aida.

Kozo Fuyutsuki.

Hikari Horaki.

Misato Katsuragi.

Ryoji Kaji.

Kaworu Nagisa.

Even… Everyone was at fault, and there was no escaping from that revelation. The world was gone and nobody would ever return. A world deprived of hope and life was a world not worth returning to, and that was why Shinji, in his despair, his crippled bitterness and condemning hatred, chose to abandon all sense of belief from others. No one's beliefs were true or worth following…and no ounce of compassion to give them credence.

" _I'm tired of everything,"_ he once said in the Entry Plug during the Twelfth Angel incident. _"I'm tired of everything."_

And he was tired of everything…and is still tired. Sleep didn't offer him the same relief as what he truly desired of and hoped would. Even if he once believed in one being able to sleep no matter how suffering they're exposed to, the fact that he wanted more than sleep was what made him unable to find relief. Not without inflicting suffering of his own at the people responsible.

Someone. Anyone. Please…help him. Stop him. Save him from his waking nightmares.

How disgusting…and how cruel I was to you, Shinji.

How disgusting, indeed…


End file.
